Seattle Christmas
by alygator86
Summary: sequel to Live, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness. Set 15 years after the epilogue. SECOND CHAPTER ADDED
1. Emily's POV

Disclaimer: I don't own GA but all the kids and the pets are mine.

Rating: T

Summery: Takes place 15 years after the epilogue of Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It's 95 narrative from Emily's POV with some dialogue.

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It was one of those years where we all stay home for Christmas and all of my Seattle cousins - as Jake, Anna, and I call them – come over. We have the biggest house because my parents went all house crazy when they built it so our house is the meeting and celebration place for the years we stay in Seattle. And this is one of them. My blood cousins live on the east coast and a lot of them have their own families now so every other year we go to New York for Christmas and stay at Grandma's house. I get Christmas presents and birthday presents since my birthday is December 2nd. I'm not complaining that we're staying in Seattle although I don't mind the snow in New York but staying in Seattle means getting to spend more time with my friends. The problem I have with Christmas is Aunt Izzie – don't get me wrong I love Aunt Izzie but she comes over, because like I said our house is where we all celebrate, and decorates like none other. My 14 year old sister, Anna, loves it. We're opposites in every way sisters can be and she was corrupted by Aunt Izzie whereas dad says I spent way too much time with Aunt Cristina when I was younger. But seriously…I'm named after her.

Maybe I should explain all the families before I go too much further. There's me – Emily Cristina Shepherd - the oldest of my family and all my Seattle cousins. I'm 20. My brother Jake is 17 and like I said Anna is 14. With our blood cousins Aaron is the oldest – he's 38 now and the youngest are Nate and Nadia who are three years older than me. Aunt Addison and Uncle Make had twins – Aiden and Megan – who are 19 and their little sister Rylie is 10. A year before Rylie was born they finally got married and it was so much fun. Uncle George and Callie have four kids and I heard mom telling dad that Aunt Izzie told her that Aunt Callie told her that she wants more kids. Crazy. Anyway Catrina is 18, Dylan and Ryan are 14 and Elena is 9. El is the youngest of the Seattle cousins and she loves every second of the attention.

Aunt Izzie and Uncle Alex have two kids - Samantha who is 17 and Matt who is 12 and he has to be the most annoying boy in the entire world. Aunt Izzie also had another daughter when she was like 16 but gave her up for adoption. Her name is Hannah and everyone met her when mom was pregnant with me. She's 33 now and lives in Florida with her husband and kids so she doesn't come to Seattle Christmases often.

Finally are Aunt Cristina and Uncle Preston's kids. Conner is 16 - he is best friends with Jake. Lillian is 11. Lily's middle name is Meredith after my mom because mom and Aunt Cristina are best friends and they're just weird like that.

So. Here I am sitting on the couch watching Aiden bring in more boxes for Aunt Izzie and wondering how my sister always gets stuck in the Christmas lights. Dad says that I'm like how mom was before they were together and everything. It's cheesy….they're cheesy and romantic and its really, really gross sometimes because Aunt Cristina says they're totally still having sex and I seriously don't want to picture that. Anyway! I'm really skinny like mom but other than that I look like dad. I have long dark hair and blue eyes and apparently I have this look that neither mom nor my brother can say 'no' to. Dad said I got it from him but he's not immune either. Jack looks like mom but he has dad's blue eyes too. Anna is a beautiful combination of them both. She has brown hair and eyes like mom and she looks like Grandma Julie.

Mom says I'm like her (pre-dad of course) and Aunt Cristina in the way that I'm anti-Christmas psychoness and that I'm always looking for a surgery to watch. And I love tequila. Yeah I know I'm underage but I've liked tequila since I first had it up at school when I was 18. Mom says I'm also a lot like dad. I'm a big daddy's girl - we both like The Clash and coffee ice cream. We have this huge thing for ferry boats. And we have the same favorite color. Indigo. In fact, I like indigo so much that when I was 17 and my hair went half way down my back - it's a little shorter now - I bleached the last three inches of my hair and dyed it indigo. But in dying my hair I was just like high school mom. She had pink hair. That would have been an interesting choice but I hate pink. Indigo all the way. Oh…and I got my tongue pierced when I was 18. Dad flipped. Mom thought it was funny.

Back to the present. My second day home from college for winter break and I wake up, at noon mind you, to my house being turned into Santa's freakin' village. All I can do is sit and bask in the whole not having to worry about classes. I'm in pre-med. I want to be a surgeon like my parents and the rest of my Seattle Grace Aunts and Uncles. I saw my first surgery from the gallery when I was 4 and since then I snuck in whenever I could – not that it's hard when your mom and dad are two of the best neurosurgeons in the country and your dad the chief of surgery.

It seems I'm not the only one that was bitten by the med school bug. Aiden and Megan both want to be doctors too. They haven't said it but I'm pretty sure they're going to be surgeons. Catrina just stated college this year claming she wanted to be a teacher. She's still claiming that but Aiden, Meg and I aren't so sure. She has been down in Texas at school and away from the galleries at Seattle Grace for too long. All four of us went yesterday to watch a couple surgeries and it was amazing. Anyone could tell you that all 14 of us 'intern spawns' are surgery addicts. McMinis as Aunt Cristina calls us. Miranda calls us the intern spawns – with love, of course.

Aunt Cristina called me 'MiniMcDreamy' for the longest time because I look so much like dad. She still does on occasion.

It's relatively quiet for the time being. Just me, Aunt Izzie, Aiden, Meg and Cat are here. Mom and dad are still at work with everyone else and all the younger kids – the ones not in college – are still at school for another two hours.

"Meg! Cat! Get your cookies!" I yelled to my best friends.

Meg and Aiden have the coolest red hair like Aunt Addison. Aunt Addie used to be married to dad but she cheated on him with Uncle Mark and now he and mom and Aunt Addie and Uncle Mark are all great friends. If you ask me that's a little weird but whatever. And Grandpa Richard was like dad is to mom only he stayed with Adele. She doesn't let us call her Grandma, she says it makes her feel old. Grandma Ellis didn't really know who we were but we still visited her until she died when I was 13. I find it really weird how mom was like her mom but it worked out for her. But still… the whole thing and everyone is cool together now. I keep going off on rambling tangents. I really need to stop that.

Meg and Catrina were baking cookies but they had gone upstairs to do something and now the cookies smelled like they were burning. They ran down the stairs and into the kitchen to take care of the cookies and Keyla, our 2 year old black lab jumped onto the couch next to me. Tiki and Scotch, our cat and dog from when I was little, both died three years ago. A year after that Mom and Dad got Keyla. Aunt Cristina told me how Tiki and Scotch got their names so when Mom and Dad told us the dog was named Keyla I knew it was from 'tequila'.

I finally decided what I was going to do. Sitting here doing nothing is great but I hadn't seen much of dad since I got home – he was coming as I was going out or vice verse. I stood up and yelled, "Anyone want to go to the hospital with me?"

"Cookies!" Meg and Cat called back.

"I'll go with you," Aiden offered, "I got all the boxes for Aunt Izzie."

We…well I drove to Seattle Grace and parked by mom's car. Aiden and I took the elevators to the fourth floor and got out by the nurses station. We went right to Nurse Olivia – she's like an honorary aunt at times.

"Olivia!" I smiled.

"Hey, just the two of you?" she asked with a smile.

Aiden shrugged, "the kids are still at school and my sister and Catrina are making cookies."

"Any idea where our parents are Aunt Livvy?" I asked with the smile mom and Jake and sometimes dad can't resist.

"All I know is that the chief is going to be OR 3," she told us.

"To the OR Board!" I pointed.

We went to the OR Board and looked at it, studying it, one of the interns who hadn't met either of us since we had been at school just about all year came up to us.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

"Oh no," I replied hiding my smile, "I'm just checking the board."

"The chief did a good job," Aiden commented.

"You're not supposed to be here," the intern told us.

I looked at her, "What's your name?" I asked.

"Dr. Erin Canter," she replied, "What's yours?"

I just nodded then turned to Aiden, "A, do you think that corpus callosotomy in OR 3 will be interesting?"

"Either that or the CABG in OR 2," he replied.

The intern was still there, "You can't watch a surgery!"

I pretended to look confused, "I can't?"

"No!" She was getting flustered.

"But my dad said I could," I told her.

She raised an eyebrow, "And who is your dad?"

"Emily, Aiden, what are you doing here?" My dad asked as if right on cue. He was wearing dark blue scrubs (indigo) and the ferry boat scrub cap.

"Trying to figure out whether we should go watch the corpus callosotomy or the CABG," Aiden replied.

"Chief, you know them?" the intern asked.

Some people could be really slow, you know. I mean, I freakin' look like him! "We're also tormenting an intern," I grinned.

He chucked, "Dr. Canter this is my daughter Emily – Anna and Jake's older sister and her cohort is Aiden Sloan – Addison Montgomery - Sloan and Mark Sloan's son," he told the intern.

She nodded and unfortunately for me and Aiden, her pager went off and she ran off. Dad put his arm around me, "What have I told you about not tormenting the interns?"

"But it's so much fun. And seriously – I look exactly like you."

He just laughed. "My corpus callosotomy is in five minutes. Go up to the gallery."

"Oh you're completely biased," I giggled.

"We were totally going for that CABG," Aiden teased. We had seen so many CABGs it wasn't funny.

My favorite intern came running up. He was kinda like Uncle George. His name was Andy Gibson.

"Hey Andy," I greeted. I hadn't seen him since before I went back to school.

"Em, Aiden, how are you guys doing?" he asked.

"We're going to watch Uncle Derek's surgery," Aiden told him, "We're are awesome."

"Great. Maybe I'll see you guys after," he said before going to scrub in with dad. We headed to the gallery after stopping at the vending machine to get snacks and drinks.

We got a seat in the front row right as dad was starting. He said his traditional line of "It's a beautiful day to save some lives, people. Let's get to work." Mom stole his line and she says it before every surgery too.

We sat next to another intern I didn't know. She looked at me questioningly.

I nudged Aiden then smiled at the intern. "Hi, I'm Emily Shepherd."

"Shepherd?" she asked me.

"Yep. I am that Shepherd and I have those parents," I replied knowing the questions that were coming, "and my grandmother was the Ellis Grey."

Aiden just laughed. About half an hour into the surgery mom came in and sat with us. She wasn't surprised to see me here – she never is. Aiden and I told her about Dr. Intern in the hallway. She told us about her surgery. It was just a tumor removal and it went smoothly. Not as exciting as Dad's surgery and she would have loved to assist on it but she had hers.

"So your second day home and you're here already," Mom laughed.

"I was here yesterday," I reminded her.

"We practically grew up here, Aunt Mer," Aiden added.

I shrugged, "And we're going to be doctors. Its good we like to hang out at a hospital."

"You are so weird," Mom said.

I stuck out my tongue at her showing my multicolored tongue ring. Mom shook her head.

"Are you ever taking that thing out? You're going to be a doctor."

"I can put in the retainer," I countered, "That little plastic thing that you couldn't see when we went to see Grandma last Christmas in New York."

"Yeah because Uncle Derek was freaking out about it still," Aiden laughed.

Dad's surgery went really well and because today was everyone-decorates-the-freakin-house day mom and dad went home early. Ok…the decorating isn't that bad. I like hanging out with everyone but like I said earlier – Santa's freakin' village.

Lily is like Aunt Cristina and I – she doesn't go for the decorating either. We usually hang out and watch the others go crazy with lights and garland and mistletoe and decorating the Christmas tree. Anna was once again tangled up in the lights – I don't know how she does it – and Rylie and Conner were in charge of carefully unpacking the ornaments for Aunt Izzie, Uncle Burke and Aunt Callie to put on the tree. The lights Anna had gotten untangled from earlier are now on the tree. She's currently tangled in the lights we put up around the room.

Aunt Cristina, Lil and I were sitting on the couch in the opposite end of the room from the Christmas tree. I noticed dad pull his favorite thing out of the box – the mistletoe. He went over to mom, who was talking Aunt Addie and Uncle George, stood next to her and held it over their heads. She looked up and smiled at him. He gave her what Cristina calls the McDreamy look, what, when I was little, I thought was gross but now it's awesome. So many of my friend's parents have gotten divorced but my parents have been married for 20 years and they're still looking at each other like Aunt Cristina said they did when they first got together. Anyway after mom noticed the mistletoe and got the McDreamy look right before dad kissed her. He wrapped an arm around her back and put one on the back of her head before dipping her. It was so sweet. Sweet in the not-as-cheesy-as-other-things way.

Everyone finished decorating and we helped put away the now empty boxes and put all the presents under the tree. With five different families – 24 people in all – it was a super good thing we have such a big living room since the presents for everyone took up so much room. Oh and we can't forget that Santa is coming too – Elena and Rylie still believe in Santa and everyone was told that we would be killed if we told the two girls otherwise.

So once we were done decorating Aunt Izzie, Uncle Burke, Sam, and Catrina made a crazy amount of Christmas cookies while the rest of us watched various Christmas movies on TV. As usual mom and dad cuddled up in the big comfy chair. Aunt Addie and Uncle Mark sat together on the couch. Uncle George and Aunt Callie sat together on the floor and everyone else was scattered around.

We go to bed at about 10 making sure to leave milk and cookies out for Santa (all our parents eat them after Ry and El go to sleep). The sleeping arrangements had already been decided the first year we did this – I was five - and modified as more of us were born. Me, Jake and Anna all have huge, and constantly messy, rooms. I have the best king sized bed and Meg, Cat and Sam all sleep with me. We have since we were little and since we're all pretty skinny we still can. In Jake's room Conner, Aiden, and Matt all sleep in sleeping bags on the floor. I think it's a guy thing not to sleep together even if you're practically family. The three youngest girls: Lily, Rylie and Elena sleep with Anna in her big bed as well. Ryan and Dylan sleep on an air mattress in the study with Aunt Callie and Uncle George. In the guest bed room there's a bed that Uncle Mark and Aunt Addie claimed then two more air mattresses for Uncle Burke and Aunt Cristina and Aunt Izzie and Uncle Alex. Mom and Dad are the only ones who don't have to share their room but I'm not complaining. I like the Christmas sleepovers with my Seattle cousins.

Christmas morning Matt, Lily, Ry and El are the ones who wake everyone up yelling that Santa came and it's Christmas – not that we didn't already know that. We all go downstairs and sit patiently, or not so patiently, around the tree waiting for our parents to ingest the proper amount of caffeine and sometimes listen to Aunt Cristina complain about morning. She doesn't do it as often anymore. Once all our parents come in with coffee Me, A, Meg and Cat – being the four oldest – pass out the gifts. Dad uses grandma's rule that no one opens until all the presents are passed out. But once the last box reaches the last hands all bets are off. Its like we're all five years old again and all you can hear is the paper ripping and crumpling, squeals of enjoyment, loud 'thank you's, Keyla barking because everyone is excited and gasps, screams, and many other sounds.

The entire opening process takes about 45.382 seconds after ten minutes of passing out the gifts. Mom has a few garbage bags ready for clean up which takes half the time it did to pass out the presents and once we clean up the wrapping paper the toys come out, batteries go flying and the toys requiring assembly get assembled. I sit on the couch and watch my Seattle cousins play with their toys and new gifts.

When I was little I used to think Christmas was all about what mom and dad and my aunts and uncles got me but sitting here…with my family…its about being with the people you love. The people you know will always be there. It's about my parents who are crazy in love after 20 years and will still be crazy in love 20 years from now. It's about Aunt Cristina complaining about the decorating and Aunt Izzie going nuts with it. It's about Uncle Burke sharing his spirituality with whatever cousins asked this year. It's about letting my little cousins still believe there is a Santa Claus. It's about Aunt Callie still making Uncle George uncomfortable in the funniest ways. It's about Aunt Addie and Uncle Mark and dad looking back at what happened between the three of them and laughing. It's about love. It's about us.

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I hope you liked it. I might write more with the kids. Maybe in another POV, I'm not sure yet. Tell me what you think!

And anything else any of you would like to see happen tell me and I will totally work on it.

Read, Love, Review, Repeat


	2. Anna's POV

Hey. I really wanted to write this from Anna's POV too. Anna is the youngest Shepherd. It's not as long as Emily's POV and it was a little harder to write but here it is.

Kids:

**MerDer:** Emily (20), Jake (17), Anna (14)

**Bang:** Conner (16), Lily (11)

**CaGe:** Catrina (18), Dylan and Ryan (14), Elena (9)

**MAddison:** Megan and Aiden (19), Rylie (10)

**Alex/Izzie:** Samantha (17), Matt (12)

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Two more hours. I have two more hours of school until I get to go home. I have half an hour of listening to my teacher drone on about chemistry and an hour and 20 minutes of my last class – ten minutes passing time. Normally I love chemistry and psych but today is one of my favorite days. Today was the day Aunt Izzie decorates our house for Christmas. My brother, Jake, my sister, Emily, and I live with our parents in this huge house built on land my dad bought when he first moved to Seattle. Emily is up at school all the time now. She's going to be a surgeon like mom and dad and our Seattle Aunts and Uncles but she's in junior in college right now. She's home now for break and I bet she's going to the hospital to watch some cool surgery.

"….which combine to make what? Ms. Shepherd?" My teacher had just called on me and sure I wasn't paying attention but I know the answer anyway.

"Sodium chloride," I answered and he went on talking again.

This day is going by sooo slowly. I live for this day. Decorating the house with Aunt Izzie day. Emily says it ends up looking like Santa's village but she's more like Aunt Cristina anyway. And we decorate every year because even if we go to New York for Christmas we have the New Years Eve party at our house. New York Christmases are fun because there's so much snow and we see all our other cousins. We have 14 cousins in New York and 11 in Seattle. A lot of my cousins in New York have families so we have tons of second cousins and it's really crazy at Grandma Julie's house.

Emily looks just like dad and Jake looks like mom. I look like both of them combined with brown curly hair and grey/blue eyes and I have mom's facial features according to Uncle George. Interns can still figure out who I am just by looking at me even if I'm not as obviously related to them as my brother and sister are. When we were younger we had to go to the hospital after school and do our homework in dad's office because everyone was working and mom didn't want us to be home alone. So we would go to dad's office, do our homework, then we would all go home for dinner. Since Emily turned 16 we went home after school and dad would be home for dinner, mom would sometimes be later. Dad told us at one point that mom didn't want to be like grandma Ellis was and he told us that mom was by herself a lot and Grandma Ellis put her job before mom. Mom is so not like that.

The bell rang and its time to go to my last class for the day. Dylan and Ryan are in my class too. Psychology. And we're watching a video so we can all sit in the back and pass notes. We stuck together all school year since it was our first year of high school. The first semester is almost over. After break – which starts today – we have finals. Jake says they're not as bad as they sound. Anyway, Dylan, Ryan and I are all the same age and we're really good friends. They're a lot like Aunt Callie and totally into bones. Jake and Samantha let me eat lunch with them and their senior friends because Ryan and D had a different lunch time than me. Conner is a junior and he's a lot like Uncle Preston. He is the one who breaks up the fights and he helps mediate but he's also a partier like Aunt Cristina. Matt is in 7th grade, Lily is in 6th grade, Rylie is in 5th grade and Elena is in 4th grade. Matt and Lily go to middle school and Rylie and Elena are in elementary school a few miles away from the middle school. All four of them take busses home – today Sam is picking them all up after school. Jake, Sam, and Conner all have licenses and cars. Jake takes me home and either Sam or Conner take Ryan and D home.

Dylan, Ryan and I spent all of Psychology passing notes and telling what we got everyone else for Christmas and they had fun making fun of how I always get tangled up in the lights. Its fun to get tangled in the lights – and I'm not really tangled I just wrap the lights around me. We also talked about how we wished we could be at the hospital now watching a surgery rather than this video on…I don't even know what. Aunt Miranda calls is the 'intern spawns' but she loves us all and our parents even though she won't admit it. Aunt Cristina called me, Emily and Jake 'McMinis'. She says that I'm bright and shiny. Mom says that's a good thing.

I am so excited about tonight. We're putting up the tree and decorating the living room and making cookies and watching Christmas movies. Class _finally _ended and the three of us ran to our lockers to grab our stuff and go home.

We got home and Meg and Cat had just finished making some cookies and they were helping Aunt Izzie unpack the Christmas stuff. Our dog, Keyla is getting more and more excited about the amount of people in the house. Aiden and Em went to the hospital to watch a surgery. Any other day I would be jealous but today was decorating day! I jumped right in helping put little Santa's and reindeer and cute little decorations around the living room and front entrance way. Dad had put the Christmas tree in the stand last night so for me that meant lights!! After putting a Santa and reindeer on the table in the hall and practically dove into the box of lights that dad made me patiently wind up last year so they wouldn't be tangled up when I put them all around me this year. Jake and the O twins (Dylan and Ryan - Megan and Aiden were called the S twins) continued putting out the cute decorations Aunt Izzie bought over the years while I pulled out a strand of multicolored lights, plugged it in to make sure it still worked, plugged in 2 more strands (connecting them) and draped them all over me while I started putting them on the tree.

Matt, Lily, Ry and El got home. Lily doesn't like the whole decorating thing like Em so she just got a snack and sat on the couch watching me put the lights on the tree. Matt started helping me telling me where I should put more lights. Aunt Izzie told Conner and Ry to start, very carefully, unpacking the ornaments and setting them on the table.

Aunt Cristina, Uncle Alex, Uncle Burke, mom, dad, Aiden, and Emily got here at almost the same time. The others were coming when they finished their individual surgeries a short time later. I had finished the tree lights and I was wrapped up in the lights that we put around the room. Aunt Cristina, Emily and Lily were hanging out on the couch in the corner watching the craziness that was decorating for Christmas. I looked over and saw dad kiss mom. Ew. It's really gross when they do that. Emily says it's cool that they love each other so much but kissing is so gross!

Once we finished decorating Aunt Izzie, Sam, Catrina, and Uncle Burke made a whole lot of Christmas cookies while the rest of us watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas then A Christmas Story. All the presents were put under the tree and there were a lot. There are presents for, like, 24 people. And then Santa has to come. Rylie and Elena still believe in him and I kinda do too but I know he doesn't really exist. I just like the idea. We're not supposed to tell Ry and El he's not real.

Christmas Eve is so much fun because everyone sleeps at our house. Lily, Rylie and Elena sleep with me in my room and we talk for like an hour or two before we go to sleep. We talk about what we think we'll get and what we think Santa will bring us – what we told him we wanted. The four of us fall asleep then wake up at about 7 the next morning. I go and let Keyla out while Lily, Ry, and Elena – along with Matt – run around and wake everyone up. We're sitting, practically bouncing with excitement as we see that Santa was once again reliable and he came and left us presents. The older kids and all our parents aren't as happy about the early wake up call but we're just so excited!

Finally Emily, Aiden, Megan and Catrina pass out the presents – because they're the oldest – and we get to open them. I got almost everything I asked for. I can't have a pony but it can't hurt to ask, can it?

I start playing with the radio controlled Barbie car I got from Santa – aka dad – and chase Keyla around the room with it. Mom always tells us that Christmas isn't about what you got or didn't get, it's about being with your family – the ones that you love. As long as she and dad stop kissing like they are now I'm totally cool with that. That and chasing Keyla around with my car.

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I hope you liked it. I have a few more ideas for the kids POVs.

Read, Love, Review, Repeat


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